[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

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kyranzor
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Re: [MOD 0.14.20] Robot Army. 0.2.3

Post by kyranzor »

Unstable branch on github (see first post of this thread for links and instructions) now has the new squad control selection tool so you can select and command a squad to move somewhere (only attack-move functionality is implemented currently), and the pick-up tool for a box-select way of quickly picking up droids is ready for you guys to test.

Also added item and entity descriptions to help people work out how to use the mod.

Please give me feedback!

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Re: [MOD 0.14.22] Robot Army. 0.2.3

Post by Jürgen Erhard »

0.15? Please? Pretty please with cherry on top?

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Re: [MOD 0.14.22] Robot Army. 0.2.3

Post by ray4ever »

Jürgen Erhard wrote:0.15? Please? Pretty please with cherry on top?
Yeah, looking realy forward to a 0.15 mod update.

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Re: [MOD 0.14.22] Robot Army. 0.2.3

Post by kyranzor »

Hello everyone,

A 0.15 compatible release with the new selection tool and all the recent AI updates in the github dev branch will be released this weekend, hopefully sooner rather than later.

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Re: [MOD 0.14.22] Robot Army. 0.2.3

Post by kyranzor »

Download the 0.15 compatible files here: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... opment.zip

unzip and rename the folder to robotarmy_0.3.0 and you can load it up and play ;)

I will finish testing and if you guys report anything between now and saturday, I fix those and release to the greater public via mod portal on saturday.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by kyranzor »

0.3.0 released. Play and report any bugs please.

Download here or mod portal (which is having issues right now, under too much load)
https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... tag/v0.3.0

Change notes are in the release page on github, or first post of this thread, and in mod portal announcement post.

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hitzu
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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by hitzu »

Image
Get this error every time after loading and playing for few minutes.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by kyranzor »

Hitzu, what are your squad size settings? Do you have a screenshot of your area where the droids are spawning? I had have tested with this guy's save game from the github issue on this exact same problem (https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfactorio/issues/102) and never got it after i set the squad hunt size to 50 ( it was at 100).

I think it's caused by the game not having any more space to put the new unit, so the script throws an error. If you use the flying combat robots they will never have this issue (because they have no size) but the normal droids take up more space so they eventually run out of room to spawn.

If you have big blobs of units that need to be cleaned up, use the new droid pick-up tool to quickly pick them all up into your inventory.

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hitzu
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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by hitzu »

Unfortunately I already overwrote the old save with new one with Robot Army uninstalled so I can't give you exact number. IIRC it was around 50 bots and I was using only gun bots. So yeah, the blobs were kinda big but this error occured only after I updated the mod and played for hours. I had no issues (other than UPS drops and bad pathfinding) before.

I really like this mod but strange robot behaviour and high CPU load gives me only a headache. And this error was the last drop, sorry. I wanted robots would give me a safe borderless area while having some threat and automated artifact farming. Now artifacts are gone, there was no threat because 3-4 squads of 30-40 very cheap gunbots can kill even big biters and clean a huge territory very effectively, and I had to wall the whole base anyway because stupid robots always wanted to cut through the core of the base and stuck in the main bus. I thought flying robots were better, but they stuck in belts too :( Flamethrower bots are very dangerous, they cannot operate in combined squads because they effectively kill other robots quicker than biters do. And sometimes they stuck in front of the rock trying to burn their way through the fireproof rock forever, yeah. And they throw forest fires causing more biters to come. So I quickly abandoned them.

Terminator robots are very expensive comparing gunbots so it's much easier just spam cheaper ones instead and there is almost no disadvantages in that other than higher CPU load. There is even a benefit of being the multiple target so the damage of biters spread across more evenly so while being killed the overall damage drops less quickly with each robot death if there is more (cheaper) bots rather than few (expensive) ones. Also there is no way to control squad size for different bots and there is very little control over the bots ratio in one squad. Therefore it's much easier to just stuck with one kind of robots and forget about them. Sorry, I'm ranting.

I really really like the idea behind the mod but currently there is too much hassle with benefits that hardly overcome it.

1) I would propose something to improve pathfinding. For example excluding chunks with many objects in them if possible, especially belts and pipes — those are major obstacles for robots. Other way would be to implement something like AAI zones to manually exclude areas form pathfinding if possible.

2) Flying bots shouldn't be affected by belts and walls. If fixing this is impossible I don't find any good reason to keep them.

3) I suggest to remove droid settings module and give the player some control in other ways with some price for the benefits:

a - For example Robot Squad Size would be determined by the robot type, the map generation settings (larger biter bases = larger squads), evolution factor and/or technology researched (like the follower robot count tech). I propose this because currently gunrobots are really the most cost effective way to destroy enemies due to virtually unlimited squad size. They can just zerg rush biters.

b - The hunting radius would be controlled by the number and position of the droid spawners or special beacon-like structures or some sort of control towers which eat quite a lot of electricity for example. Control towers would have an effective area like radars have where robots do their job. The more towers are on the map, the more cumulative radius bonus is.

4) If possible add the ability to control the squad composition via combinators. Currently controlling this with the latch or presize timing is quite difficult.

5) Make something with flamebots! Currently they do more harm than good!

Thank you for long and possibly not pleasing reading. Sorry if I upset you.

kyranzor
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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by kyranzor »

hey everyone, 0.3.1 is out now.
Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.3.1:

-fixed new force handler (two bugs in one go) (git issue #101)

-removed unlocking of rally post, disabled it via migration script. Rally point is causing too many problems and has conflicting logic which will be dealt with later and re-addeed.

-also turned logging onto non-debug mode and 'do not log ticks'. Should reduce filesystem load.


something really cool is pressing M to see map, and then use mouse-wheel to zoom in enough that you can see a kind of grainy film view.. the squad control and pickup selection tools work from this screen and you can literally RTS control a big-ass squad around. Try it out!

hitzu wrote:Unfortunately I already overwrote the old save with new one with Robot Army uninstalled so I can't give you exact number. IIRC it was around 50 bots and I was using only gun bots. So yeah, the blobs were kinda big but this error occured only after I updated the mod and played for hours. I had no issues (other than UPS drops and bad pathfinding) before.
Hitzu, don't worry i'm not upset by your post, you are right and also have some good ideas. I'm sorry that your gameplay experience has been negative, I hope one day that my mod will be only positive experiences :)

The balance of the SMG droid could perhaps be fixed by reducing the amount of bonuses it gets from the bullet speed and damage research. The rocket droid seems to scale up well too. I agree the flame bots are dangerous, and I need to make their fire damage do some physical damage as well so they can get past rocks.

The terminators are not really meant to be the only end-game unit, but yeah they are expensive - i've heard many people complain that they are actually too cheap, and they just streamroll everything.. So balance is hard hehe.
hitzu wrote: I really really like the idea behind the mod but currently there is too much hassle with benefits that hardly overcome it.

1) I would propose something to improve pathfinding. For example excluding chunks with many objects in them if possible, especially belts and pipes — those are major obstacles for robots. Other way would be to implement something like AAI zones to manually exclude areas form pathfinding if possible.

2) Flying bots shouldn't be affected by belts and walls. If fixing this is impossible I don't find any good reason to keep them.

3) I suggest to remove droid settings module and give the player some control in other ways with some price for the benefits:

a - For example Robot Squad Size would be determined by the robot type, the map generation settings (larger biter bases = larger squads), evolution factor and/or technology researched (like the follower robot count tech). I propose this because currently gunrobots are really the most cost effective way to destroy enemies due to virtually unlimited squad size. They can just zerg rush biters.

b - The hunting radius would be controlled by the number and position of the droid spawners or special beacon-like structures or some sort of control towers which eat quite a lot of electricity for example. Control towers would have an effective area like radars have where robots do their job. The more towers are on the map, the more cumulative radius bonus is.

4) If possible add the ability to control the squad composition via combinators. Currently controlling this with the latch or presize timing is quite difficult.

5) Make something with flamebots! Currently they do more harm than good!
Unfortunately for all of us involved, I can't do anything about point #1 or #2 - both are game-engine related things that only the Factorio devs can help me with.

With point #3, I have definitely thought about having a building like a 'control tower' or whatever, that helps limit or define the operational area of units, but right now these settings modules are not too bad - but related to point #4 I really need to change the way it works so that it's local only to a droid assembler connected by circuit wire. I think with assembler-based logic and control, and with some complicated automatic recipe-changing or handling to allow us to specify squad ratios exactly, from the combinator.

It will need a big re-write of the code to do it, but i think it's worth doing (the combinator for each assembler, setting squad ratio exactly with automatic recipe-handling, hunt distance per assembler etc).

What do you think? Would those changes help your experience?

kyranzor
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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.1

Post by kyranzor »

0.3.2 is out.
Fixes a thing i broke while fixing another error. Init script was failing because I had fixed one part but hadn't tested enough to catch this bug I introduced.

New games, or games that newly add the mod would have an error in on_init event. That has been fixed.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.3] Robot Army. v0.3.0

Post by hitzu »

kyranzor wrote: The balance of the SMG droid could perhaps be fixed by reducing the amount of bonuses it gets from the bullet speed and damage research. The rocket droid seems to scale up well too. I agree the flame bots are dangerous, and I need to make their fire damage do some physical damage as well so they can get past rocks.

The terminators are not really meant to be the only end-game unit, but yeah they are expensive - i've heard many people complain that they are actually too cheap, and they just streamroll everything.. So balance is hard hehe.
Well, terminators are not expensive on their own, regarding the damage they do. They are expensive relatively to gun robots. And taking away the reasearch bonuses from any of them sounds a little bit unfair. That's why I proposed to limit the size of the squads in order to limit their cumulative firepower and that size could be another point of relative balancing. There should be some 'cost in points' of being in the squad for each robot and the squad size would have a limiting number of availiable points. So for example the squad size is 100 points, gunbots take 20 points, firbots take 25 and terminators take 35 points. So you can have either 5 gunbots in the squad, 4 firefots or 2 terminators, or you can combine them and add one gunbot to 2 terminators. Of course those number are just for example.
kyranzor wrote:Unfortunately for all of us involved, I can't do anything about point #1 or #2 - both are game-engine related things that only the Factorio devs can help me with.
Tha's sad :( This is a major turn off
kyranzor wrote:With point #3, I have definitely thought about having a building like a 'control tower' or whatever, that helps limit or define the operational area of units, but right now these settings modules are not too bad - but related to point #4 I really need to change the way it works so that it's local only to a droid assembler connected by circuit wire. I think with assembler-based logic and control, and with some complicated automatic recipe-changing or handling to allow us to specify squad ratios exactly, from the combinator.

It will need a big re-write of the code to do it, but i think it's worth doing (the combinator for each assembler, setting squad ratio exactly with automatic recipe-handling, hunt distance per assembler etc).

What do you think? Would those changes help your experience?
Yeah, this could help :) Especially with the limited squad size.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by hitzu »

I gosh, I think I underestimated how useful and powerful robots were...
Now my base is almost constantly under the biters attack here and there and I have to install hundreds of laser turrets everywhere! :lol:

Probably I gonna install it back :D

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by kyranzor »

haha, yeah, they are like 'peace keepers'. Distract the biters and keep your base safe.

You can command your squads from the map view by zooming in and using the command tool to select and move them. So if they are stuck or on the wrong side of map, give them a command to move somewhere better.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by hitzu »

I like this feature! It's really useful since robots open map chunks themselves.

BTW I wanted to ask how the distance radius is calculated? Is the center of this coverage area in the middle of the map or each spawner has its own coverage area?

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by kyranzor »

hitzu wrote:I like this feature! It's really useful since robots open map chunks themselves.

BTW I wanted to ask how the distance radius is calculated? Is the center of this coverage area in the middle of the map or each spawner has its own coverage area?
Radius is from the squad's current position. They will keep killing until they die, or run out of targets, basically, if there is anything nearby them.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by kyranzor »

You can change the targeting method from 1 to 3 in config.lua to make the squads keep a radius around their home assembler clear as priority and then if nothing near assembler they will do normal target radius around squad. Please try this.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by Mylon »

Kyranzor, how did you keep robots from getting aggroed on the player?

I'm trying to write a mod that uses friendly biters and even with "beasts.friendly_fire = false" and "beasts.set_friend(game.forces.player, true)" they still will get stuck on belts and attack them.

I'm also having problems having them follow the player so if you could advise on how to accomplish that I would love to hear it.

The full code is here: https://github.com/Brickcaster/factorio ... master.lua

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by comwarrior »

I think i have found a bug...

34098.916 Error MainLoop.cpp:943: Exception at tick 40328651: Error while running event robotarmy::on_tick (ID 0)
H:/Games/Factorio Modded/data/core/lualib/util.lua:5: attempt to index local 'position1' (a number value)
34098.916 Error ClientMultiplayerManager.cpp:92: MultiplayerManager failed: "Error while running event robotarmy::on_tick (ID 0)
H:/Games/Factorio Modded/data/core/lualib/util.lua:5: attempt to index local 'position1' (a number value)"
34098.916 Info ClientMultiplayerManager.cpp:542: MapTick(40328651) changing state from(InGame) to(Failed)
34169.572 Info ClientMultiplayerManager.cpp:179: Quitting multiplayer connection.
34169.572 Info ClientMultiplayerManager.cpp:542: MapTick(40328651) changing state from(Failed) to(Disconnected)


It seems to happen when we have aprox 250 ish flamer bots (squad size 100) so i'm wondering if it's a byte sized var for ID or a byte-wise operation on a word lenght var? or something similar.

This has been replicated many times.

Mod running on a server with two of us on. Crash also occurs with only one on.

Other mods installed are...
  • 0.884 Loading mod base 0.15.28 (data.lua)
    1.098 Loading mod FARL 1.1.6 (data.lua)
    1.146 Loading mod rso-mod 3.3.10 (data.lua)
    1.198 Loading mod vehicles-equipement-grid 0.15.0 (data.lua)
    1.239 Loading mod aai-industry 0.1.11 (data.lua)
    1.278 Loading mod aai-signals 0.2.4 (data.lua)
    1.319 Loading mod aai-vehicles-chaingunner 0.2.4 (data.lua)
    1.374 Loading mod aai-vehicles-flame-tumbler 0.2.3 (data.lua)
    1.433 Loading mod aai-vehicles-hauler 0.2.3 (data.lua)
    1.481 Loading mod aai-vehicles-laser-tank 0.2.1 (data.lua)
    1.540 Loading mod aai-vehicles-warden 0.1.2 (data.lua)
    1.607 Loading mod aai-zones 0.2.3 (data.lua)
    1.658 Loading mod Advanced-Electric-v15 0.1.6 (data.lua)
    1.710 Loading mod auto-research 3.5.0 (data.lua)
    1.761 Loading mod AutomaticTrainBuilder 0.3.1 (data.lua)
    1.809 Loading mod BetterBeacons 0.2.4 (data.lua)
    1.874 Loading mod D-Load-Storage 0.1.5 (data.lua)
    1.916 Loading mod data-raw-prototypes 0.3.1 (data.lua)
    1.969 Loading mod FastLongInserters 1.2.1 (data.lua)
    2.035 Loading mod Fast Replace Underground Belt 1.5.3 (data.lua)
    2.089 Loading mod folk-logistic-wagon 0.2.4 (data.lua)
    2.150 Loading mod four-toolbelts 0.15.0 (data.lua)
    2.198 Loading mod LaserTurretRangeUpgrade 0.1.1 (data.lua)
    2.254 Loading mod LogisticTrainNetwork 1.3.4 (data.lua)
    2.306 Loading mod Nuclear Locomotives 1.1.2 (data.lua)
    2.362 Loading mod NuclearRobots 0.0.4 (data.lua)
    2.418 Loading mod Power Armor MK3 0.1.2 (data.lua)
    2.501 Loading mod Power Armor MK4 0.0.4 (data.lua)
    2.560 Loading mod radarplus for rso 0.0.4 (data.lua)
    2.614 Loading mod Rampant 0.15.17 (data.lua)
    2.682 Loading mod Roboports Extended 0.0.2 (data.lua)
    2.746 Loading mod robotarmy 0.3.2 (data.lua)
    2.821 Loading mod Robot_Battery_Research 0.1.0 (data.lua)
    2.879 Loading mod rocket_turret 0.0.8 (data.lua)
    2.951 Loading mod SatelliteRadar 0.5.0 (data.lua)
    3.012 Loading mod Shield-Pulse 15.1.2 (data.lua)
    3.083 Loading mod StupidAchievements 0.1.1 (data.lua)
    3.160 Loading mod TreeSaplings 0.1.10 (data.lua)
    3.242 Loading mod upgrade-planner 1.2.18 (data.lua)
    3.318 Loading mod Warehousing v15 0.0.14 (data.lua)
    3.366 Loading mod aai-programmable-structures 0.3.8 (data.lua)
    3.448 Loading mod aai-vehicles-miner 0.2.11 (data.lua)
    3.531 Loading mod aai-programmable-vehicles 0.3.25 (data.lua)
    3.626 Loading mod base 0.15.28 (data-updates.lua)
    3.744 Loading mod FARL 1.1.6 (data-updates.lua)
    3.819 Loading mod rso-mod 3.3.10 (data-updates.lua)
    3.901 Loading mod aai-industry 0.1.11 (data-updates.lua)
    3.990 Loading mod aai-vehicles-chaingunner 0.2.4 (data-updates.lua)
    4.079 Loading mod aai-vehicles-hauler 0.2.3 (data-updates.lua)
    4.155 Loading mod aai-vehicles-warden 0.1.2 (data-updates.lua)
    4.243 Loading mod Power Armor MK4 0.0.4 (data-updates.lua)
    4.309 Loading mod Rampant 0.15.17 (data-updates.lua)
    4.394 Loading mod robotarmy 0.3.2 (data-updates.lua)
    4.483 Loading mod aai-vehicles-miner 0.2.11 (data-updates.lua)
    4.583 Loading mod aai-programmable-vehicles 0.3.25 (data-updates.lua)
    4.685 Loading mod FARL 1.1.6 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    4.782 Loading mod vehicles-equipement-grid 0.15.0 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    4.841 Loading mod aai-industry 0.1.11 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    4.918 Loading mod aai-vehicles-warden 0.1.2 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.016 Loading mod auto-research 3.5.0 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.096 Loading mod data-raw-prototypes 0.3.1 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.470 Loading mod detached-gun-sounds 0.2.1 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.563 Loading mod LogisticTrainNetwork 1.3.4 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.564 Script data-final-fixes.lua:94: [LTN] found 378 items, 10 fluids, 3 locomotives, 3 wagons
    5.650 Loading mod off-grid-effects 0.2.2 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.754 Loading mod Rampant 0.15.17 (data-final-fixes.lua)
    5.838 Loading mod aai-programmable-vehicles 0.3.25 (data-final-fixes.lua)
Server side log available as well as multiple autosaves in 10 min increments but i'll need somewhere to upload. I have a high speed connection so I can upload massive amounts quickly if needed. The bug appeared many times on a live stream, so if you want to see what i am doing, the broadcast is available for 14 days.
If you need anything else just ask.

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Re: [MOD 0.15.5] Robot Army. v0.3.2

Post by kyranzor »

Hi comwarrior,

i'm sorry to hear that your game was interrupted like that.

In May this year I fixed that issue, it's currently in the "Unstable" branch (which is what I use for testing and fixes etc before releasing to the public on the Mod Portal).

https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... e/Unstable

Please grab all the files from that branch, usually you can use this link: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... stable.zip
to grab a zip with all the source.

Whack that into your Robot Army mod folder and replace all files.

You will now have the fix, plus a few improvements in robot behaviour. Please try this and get back to me if you do not receive any more errors (to confirm the fix).

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